Did you know that July 11, 1987 was the very first “World Population Day”? [1] World Population Day was designed “to track world population and bring light to population growth trends and issues related to it”. That year, the world’s population was 5 billion – a result of about 200,000 years of population growth – and 24 years later, we had added 2 billion more. Now 150 babies are being born every minute and the United Nations forecasts world population to reach 9 billion people by 2050.

I think you can easily google all the nightmare scenarios that this crushing population burden can have on our lives. One question which continues to be very controversial is how we’re going to feed 9 billion people, when today nearly 1 billion people don’t have enough food to eat. The United Nations warns that food production needs to increase by 70% in order to feed the world in 2050. [2] But with agricultural land dwindling while more than 1 billion people go to bed hungry, how could we possible feed the whole world population in 2050?

Since the 1950’s, we’ve been able to increase food production significantly through the “magic” of the “Green Revolution”, which increased yields through the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, expansion of irrigation, and genetic engineering. The Green Revolution is a known quantity, and big chemical companies have lots at stake in ensuring that it continues down the same ol’ path of more agrochemicals and genetically modified crops, even though the world is different now. Farmers continue to use a lot of chemicals, because there is no coast assigned to environmental externalities, and the profitability of doing things with lots of chemical input isn’t questioned, according to Matt Liebman, an agronomy professor at Iowa State Univeristy. [3]

But in the world of the 21st Century, growth in food production is flattening, human population continues to increase, demand outstrips production and food prices soar. As Dale Allen Pfeiffer maintains in Eating Fossil Fuels, modern intensive agriculture – as developed through the Green Revolution – is unsustainable and has not been the panacea some hoped it would be. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products:

More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied,

along with more pesticides;

irrigation water requires more energy to pump;

and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water – a vicious cycle.

The data on yields, fertilizer and pesticide use (not to mention human health problems) supports these allegations. A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists called “Failure to Yield” sums it up nicely. (click here).

This food crisis has produced contradictory accounts of the problem and different ways of solving it. One group is concerned mainly about feeding the world’s growing population. It argues that high and volatile prices will make the job harder and that more needs to be done to boost supplies through the spread of modern farming, plant research and food processing in poor countries. For this group, the Green Revolution was a stunning success and needs to be followed by a second one now.

The other group argues that modern agriculture produces food that is tasteless, nutritionally inadequate and environmentally disastrous. It thinks the Green Revolution has been a failure, or at least that it has done more environmental damage and brought fewer benefits than anyone expected. An influential book espousing this view, Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, starts by asking: “What should we have for dinner?” By contrast, those worried about food supplies wonder: “Will there be anything for dinner?” The second group often proposes the tenants of organic agriculture as a way out of this crisis.

There is much skepticism and sometimes even outright opposition to sustainable agriculture. The popular belief is that switching to organic agriculture will almost certainly result in lower production, which couldn’t possibly be a way to feed 9 billion people. Mark Rosegrant, of the International Food Policy Research Institute, sums up this view nicely by saying that going organic would require more land, and though not bad, per se, it is not an important part of the overall process to feed 9 billion people.[4] And The Economist, in a special report on “feeding the World”, said “Traditional and organic farming could feed Europeans and Americans well. It cannot feed the world.”[5]

Why am I obsessing about agriculture? Agriculture and food production are the base of life and the economy and have multiple functions in creating healthy societies. It is at the center of addressing challenges like hunger and poverty, climate change and environment, women’s wellbeing and community health, income and employment. We certainly need to look beyond black/white, either/or options and find creative solutions to this crisis.

Agroecology is one of many terms people use to describe one approach to farming – others being sustainable agriculture, ecological agriculture, low-external input agriculture or people-centered agriculture. Agroecology is: farming that “centers on food production that makes the best use of nature’s goods and services while not damaging these resources.” It applies ecology to the design of farming systems; uses a whole-systems approach to farming and food systems; and links ecology, culture, economics and society to create healthy environments, food production and communities.[6] And agroecology works (please see reports in the footnotes section below)[7]:

More food is produced.

Fewer inputs are required – meaning reduced expenses.

Soil fertility is improved.

Rainfall is captured and managed better.

Pests are managed better.

Greater income is generated.

Farming systems are diversified and produce synergistic benefits.

Farms and communities are more resilient to climate change and shocks such as hurricanes, droughts and food or fertilizer price spikes.

Carbon is sequestered in soils rich in organic matter and the integration of trees into farming systems.

And farmers and their organizations use their skills, knowledge and creativity to learn and manage the process. These women and men are the innovators and leaders creating healthy farming systems for their communities and countries.

In March, 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food , Olivier de Schutter, presented a new report, “Agro-ecology and the right to food”, which was based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature. The report demonstrates that agroecology, if sufficiently supported, can double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty. “Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live — especially in unfavorable environments. …To date, agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% for all African projects,” De Schutter says.

Now Mark Bittman, writing in the New York Times, states that “it’s becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, profitably, with far fewer chemicals. …Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical use – if it wants to”.[8] He cites a study published by Iowa State University, in which researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year cycle that included oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and alfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the raising of livestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer. The longer rotations produced no downside at all – yields of corn and soy were better, nitrogen fertilizers and herbicides were reduced by up to 88%, and toxins in groundwater was reduced 200-fold – while profits didn’t decline by a single cent. There was an increase in labor costs (but remember profits were stable), so “it’s a matter of paying people for their knowledge and smart work instead of paying chemical companies for poisons.”[9]

Mr. Bittman goes on to say :

No one expects Iowa corn and soybean farmers to turn this thing around tomorrow, but one might at least hope that the U.S.D.A.would trumpet the outcome. The agency declined to comment when I asked about it. One can guess that perhaps no one at the higher levels even knows about it, or that they’re afraid to tell Monsantoabout agency-supported research that demonstrates a decreased need for chemicals. (A conspiracy theorist might note that the journals Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences both turned down the study. It was finally published in PLOS One; I first read about it on the Union of Concerned Scientists Web site.)

I think this study is a good example of agroecology principles. Mr. Bittman goes on to say:

When I asked Adam Davis, an author of the study who works for the U.S.D.A., to summarize the findings, he said, “These were simple changes patterned after those used by North American farmers for generations. What we found was that if you don’t hold the natural forces back they are going to work for you.”

THIS means that not only is weed suppression a direct result of systematic and increased crop rotation along with mulching, cultivation and other nonchemical techniques, but that by not poisoning the fields, we make it possible for insects, rodents and other critters to do their part and eat weeds and their seeds. In addition, by growing forage crops for cattle or other ruminants you can raise healthy animals that not only contribute to the health of the fields but provide fertilizer. (The same manure that’s a benefit in a system like this is a pollutant in large-scale, confined animal-rearing operations, where thousands of animals make manure disposal an extreme challenge.)

Perhaps most difficult to quantify is that this kind of farming — more thoughtful and less reflexive — requires more walking of the fields, more observations, more applications of fertilizer and chemicals if, when and where they’re needed, rather than on an all-inclusive schedule. “You substitute producer knowledge for blindly using inputs,” Davis says.

So: combine crop rotation, the re-integration of animals into crop production and intelligent farming, and you can use chemicals (to paraphrase the report’s abstract) to fine-tune rather than drive the system, with no loss in performance and in fact the gain of animal products.

Can you argue that less synthetic chemical use would not be a good thing? This is big business, and naturally the food system will need big investors to effect any changes. But some are waking up. One investor who sees the need for change is Jeremy Grantham, chief investment strategist for Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co, LLC, who says: “The U.S.D.A., the big ag schools, colleges, land grants, universities — they’re all behind standard farming, which is: sterilize the soil. Kill it dead, [then] put on fertilizer, fertilizer, fertilizer and water, and then beat the bugs back again with massive doses of insecticide and pesticide.” (At one point in the conversation, he said that most supporters of industrial agriculture, who tell “deliberate lies over and over again,” could have been taught everything they know by Goebbels.) “I think a portfolio of farms that are doing state-of-the-art farming over a 20-, 30-year horizon will be the best investment money can buy.”[10]

The promise of the Green Revolution was that it would end hunger through the magic of chemicals and genetic engineering. The reasoning goes like this: the miracle seeds of the Green Revolution increase grain yields; higher yields mean more income for poor farmers, helping them to climb out of poverty, and more food means less hunger. Dealing with the root causes of poverty that contribute to hunger takes a very long time – but people are starving now. So we must do what we can now – and that’s usually to increase production. The Green Revolution buys the time Third World countries desperately need to deal with the underlying social causes of poverty and to cut birth rates.

Today, though, growth in food production is flattening, human population continues to increase, demand outstrips production; food prices soar. As Dale Allen Pfeiffer maintains in Eating Fossil Fuels, modern intensive agriculture – as developed through the Green Revolution – is unsustainable and has not been the panacea some hoped it would be. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water. And the data on yields, and fertilizer and pesticide use (not to mention human health problems) supports these allegations. A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists called “Failure to Yield” sums it up nicely. (click here).

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, says the Achilles heel of current green revolution methods is a dependence on fossil fuels. “The only way you can have one farmer feed 140 Americans is with monocultures. And monocultures need lots of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and lots of fossil-fuel-based pesticides,” Pollan says. “That only works in an era of cheap fossil fuels, and that era is coming to an end. Moving anyone to a dependence on fossil fuels seems the height of irresponsibility.”

So is a reprise of the green revolution—with the traditional package of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, supercharged by genetically engineered seeds—really the answer to the world’s food crisis? As Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, describes it: the good news is that feeding the world in 2050 is completely possible; the bad news is that there isn’t a lot of money to be made by doing so.[1]

It has become clear that agriculture has to shrink its environmental footprint – to do more with less. The world’s growing demand for agricultural production must be met not by bringing more land into production, with more gallons of water, or with more intensive use of inputs that impact the environment, but by being better stewards of existing resources through the use of technological innovation combined with policy reforms to ensure proper incentives are in place.[2]

A massive study (published in 2009) called the “International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development” concluded that the immense production increases brought about by science and technology in the past 30 years have failed to improve food access for many of the world’s poor. The six-year study, initiated by the World Bank and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and involving some 400 agricultural experts from around the globe, called for a paradigm shift in agriculture toward more sustainable and ecologically friendly practices that would benefit the world’s 900 million small farmers, not just agribusiness. As the report states: “business as usual is no longer an option”.[3]

In the final analysis, if the history of the Green Revolution has taught us one thing, it is that increased food production can-and often does-go hand in hand with greater hunger. If the very basis of staying competitive in farming is buying expensive inputs, then wealthier farmers will inexorably win out over the poor, who are unlikely to find adequate employment to compensate for the loss of farming livelihoods. Hunger is not caused by a shortage of food, and cannot be eliminated by producing more.

This is why we must be skeptical when Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, and other chemical-cum-biotechnology companies tell us that genetic engineering will boost crop yields and feed the hungry. The technologies they push have dubious benefits and well-documented risks, and the second Green Revolution they promise is no more likely to end hunger than the first.

Far too many people do not have access to the food that is already available because of deep and growing inequality. If agriculture can play any role in alleviating hunger, it will only be to the extent that the bias toward wealthier and larger farmers is reversed through pro-poor alternatives like land reform and sustainable agriculture, which reduce inequality and make small farmers the center of an economically vibrant rural economy.

We began this series a few weeks ago with statements from several people who said that organic agriculture cannot feed the world. Yet increasing numbers of scientists, policy panels and experts are suggesting that agricultural practices pretty close to organic — perhaps best called “sustainable” — can feed more poor people sooner, begin to repair the damage caused by industrial production and, in the long term, become the norm. This new way of looking at agriculture is called agroecology, which is simply the application of ecological principles to the production of food, fuel and pharmaceuticals. The term is not associated with any one type of farming (i.e., organic, conventional or intensive) or management practices, but rather recognizes that there is no one formula for success. Agroecology is concerned with optimizing yields while minimizing negative environmental and socio-economic impacts of modern technologies.

In March, 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food , Olivier de Schutter, presented a new report, “Agro-ecology and the right to food”, which was based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature. The report demonstrates that agroecology, if sufficiently supported, can double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty. “To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available,” says De Schutter. “Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live — especially in unfavorable environments. …To date, agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% for all African projects,” De Schutter says. “Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years.”

The report calls for investment in extension services, storage facilities, and rural infrastructure like roads, electricity, and communication technologies, to help provide smallholders with access to markets, agricultural research and development, and education. Additionally, it notes the importance of providing farmers with credit and insurance against weather-related risks.

De Sheutter goes on to say: “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations.” Instead, the report says the solution lies with smallholder farmers. Agro-ecology, according to De Sheutter, immediately helps “small farmers who must be able to farm in ways that are less expensive and more productive. But it benefits all of us, because it decelerates global warming and ecological destruction.”

The majority of the world’s hungry are smallholder farmers, capable of growing food but currently not growing enough food to feed their families each year. A net global increase in food production alone will not guarantee the end of hunger (as the poor cannot access food even when it is available), but an increase in productivity for poor farmers will make a dent in global hunger. Potentially, gains in productivity by smallholder farmers will provide an income to farmers as well, if they grow a surplus of food that they can sell.

As an example of how this process works, the UN report suggests that “rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise”. For example, in Kenya, researchers and farmers developed a successful “push-pull” strategy to control pests in corn, and using town meetings, national radio broadcasts, and farmer field schools, spread the system to over 10,000 households.

The push-pull method involves pushing pests away from corn by interplanting corn with an insect repelling crop called Desmodium (which can be fed to livestock), while pulling the pests toward small nearby plots of Napier grass, “a plant that excretes a sticky gum which both attracts and traps pests.” In addition to controlling pests, this system produces livestock fodder, thus doubling corn yields and milk production at the same time. And it improves the soil to boot![4]

Further, by decentralizing production, floods in Southeast Asia, for example, might not mean huge shortfalls in the world’s rice crop; smaller scale farming makes the system less susceptible to climate shocks. If you read the story by Justin Gillis in the New York Times on May 5, which discusses the effects climate change is having on crop yields, this can only be a good thing.

Significantly, the UN report mentions that past efforts to combat hunger focused mostly on cereals such as wheat and rice which, while important, do not provide a wide enough range of nutrients to prevent malnutrition. Thus, the biodiversity in agroecological farming systems provide much needed nutrients. “For example,” the report says, “it has been estimated that indigenous fruits contribute on average about 42 percent of the natural food-basket that rural households rely on in southern Africa. This is not only an important source of vitamins and other micronutrients, but it also may be critical for sustenance during lean seasons.” Indeed, in agroecological farming systems around the world, plants a conventional American farm might consider weeds are eaten as food or used in traditional herbal medicine.

States and donors have a key role to play here. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds. The flood-tolerant rice mentioned above was created from an old strain grown in a small area of India, but decades of work were required to improve it. But even after it was shown that this new variety was able to survive floods for twice as long as older varieties, there was no money for distribution of the seeds to the farmers. Indeed, the distribution was made possible only through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

American efforts to fight global hunger, to date, have focused more on crop breeding, particularly genetic engineering, and nitrogen fertilizer than agroecology. Whereas the new UN report notes that, “perhaps because [agroecological] practices cannot be rewarded by patents, the private sector has been largely absent from this line of research.” The U.S. aggressively promotes public-private partnerships with corporations[5] such as seed and chemical companies Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, and BASF; agribusiness companies Cargill, Bunge; and Archer Daniels Midland; processed food companies PepsiCo, Nestle, General Mills, Coca Cola, Unilever, and Kraft Foods; and the retail giant Wal-Mart.[6]

We need to look closely at all options since there is so much at stake. To meet the challenges listed above, perhaps we need what Jon Foley calls a “resilient hybrid strategy”. Foley, director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Minnesota, puts it this way:

I think we need a new kind of agriculture – kind of a third agriculture, between the big agribusiness, commercial approach to agriculture, and the lessons from organic and local systems…. Can we take the best of both of these and invent a more sustainable, and scalable agriculture?[7]

The New York Times article pointed out the success of a new variety of rice seeds that survived recent floods in India after being submerged for 10 days. “It’s the best example in agriculture,” said Julia Bailey-Serres, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside. “The submergence-tolerant rice essentially sits and waits out the flood.” (8)

But this path raises many concerns – for example, genetically modified seeds are anathema to much of Europe and many environmentalists. And so far, genetic breakthroughs such as engineering plants that can fix their own nitrogen or are resistant to drought “has proven a lot harder than they thought,” says Michael Pollan, who says the major problem with GMO seeds is that they’re intellectual property. He is calling for an open source code (i.e., divorcing genetic modifications from intellectual property). De Sheutter sees promise in marker-assisted selection and participatory plant breeding, which “uses the strength of modern science, while at the same time putting farmers in the driver’s seat.”

They do not yield more; in a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Failure to Yield, data shows that despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields. In fact data points to possibly lower yields than would have been achieved by NOT using GMO seed.

But I still didn’t understand what the fuss is all about. After all, companies have been making claims for products forever. Shouldn’t the product just die by way of non-purchase? Why should governments get involved and prohibit the use of GMO seeds? Why are the organic trade associations around the world in such an uproar?

After all, the promise of genetic engineering is very powerful – to be able to feed the world as populations increase and agricultural land gets squeezed. James McWilliams, an associate professor at Texas State University, says that genetic engineering is “a hidden realm of opportunity to feed the world’s impending 9 billion a diet produced in an environmentally responsible way.” Time Magazine reported in September, 2009 that a scientist at Texas A & M University has discovered a way to remove the gossypol (a naturally occurring toxic chemical that protects the plant from infestation) from cottonseeds. Today cottonseeds can be used for humans only after an extensive refining process to remove the gossypol. Also in the works are crops that can produce higher yields with less water; a dust from genetically modified ferns that can remove heavy metals from the soil; crops that can withstand drought or high salt content in soil; and other GM technologies that “have the potential not only to streamline production, but to play a meaningful role in reducing their carbon footprint.”(1) Sounds pretty good to me.

In the United States, we haven’t heard much about genetic engineering, because in 1992, the
FDA unilaterally decided (in its opinion) that as long as a GM food is no more toxic, allergenic, or any less “substantially equivalent” than its standard counterpart, it need not be labeled to show the process that created it. That is quite different from the European labeling laws, introduced in 1997, which required that any food containing residues of engineered DNA or protein must be recorded as GM.

So what is it about genetic engineering that has these other governments and organizations so concerned? Part of the problem may be that the scientific community does not like the unknown, and it seems to have not reached a consensus on the safety of these products for our health or for the environment, although it’s hard to determine what interests are behind which studies.

These areas of concern, in addition to those of the plants developing increasing tolerances to pesticides and herbicides, include :

The concept of “drift”: that is, pollen from genetically engineered plants will spread by insects and the winds to affect non-GMO plants. (After all, a bee can travel up to 30 km or more.) This contaminates both conventional and organic fields. And farmers or food processors lose money because of unwanted contamination. The Organic Trade Association of Canada recently reported the discovery of contaminated flax seed in some German food products; native corn in Mexico (where it is illegal to plant genetically engineered corn) was reported to have new GM genes found in the genome, where they could interfere with the plant’s normal genes.(2) “It’s time for biotech companies to be good parents and take responsibility for their children. The owners of GE crops need to assume the liability for loss of market access due to their technologies appearing in countries or products in which they are not wanted. As GE products are not permitted under organic standards, the organic sector in Canada is extremely concerned by the prospect of losing access to its essential markets in Europe, Asia and around the world,” said Matthew Holmes, managing director of OTA in Canada. According to the U.S. Organic Trade Association, “Bt contamination is a trespass, a nuisance, unwanted, and can lead to significant economic losses for organic farmers. This is a clear example of potentially disastrous environmental degradation, with the added problem that consumers seeking products that contain no genetically engineered materials may be denied this choice because of inadvertent contamination.”

Concerns regarding human health: These are classed into those that fall under “unknown effect on human health” and allergenicity. With regard to unknown effects, a study published by the Austrian government found that mice fed a type of genetically engineered corn produced fewer offspring and more females with no offspring, than mice fed conventional corn. The effects were particularly pronounced in the third and fourth litters, after the mice had eaten the GE corn for a longer period of time. Another study published in Lancet claimed that there are appreciable differences in the intestines of rats fed genetically engineered potatoes and those fed unmodified potatoes.(3) The milk from cows injected with genetically engineered bovine growth hormone rBGH (sometimes called rBST) has been found to have much higher levels of IGF-1, a hormone considered to be a high risk factor for breast, prostate, colon, lung and other cancers – and the milk has lowered nutritional value! (4).“This … should serve as a wake-up call to governments around the world that genetically engineered foods could cause long-term health damage,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. With regard to allergenicity, there is the possibility that introducing a gene into a plant may cause a new allergen or cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals. When DNA from one organism is spliced into another, can it turn a non-allergenic food into one that will cause an allergic reaction in some people?

Concerns regarding agricultural diversity: The 1st conference on animal and plant breeding of the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) was held in August, 2009. Speakers at the conference made it clear that we are in a battle to save the diversity of today’s food in order to have future food. According to Vandana Shivam, who spoke at the conference, unprecendented weather is occurring in India with the disruption of life-giving monsoons which used to appear as regularly as clockwork. Farmers growing GMO rice could not plant their seedlings because of lack of rain, while farmers who had access to heirloom drought-tolerant varieties were able to plant and get a crop. Traditional farming used to include over 250 crops. Now there are a mere 2 crops. Community seed banks are springing up around India to preserve traditional varieities, and “freedom villages” are forming to prohibit GMOs because of their threat to traditional seeds. You can learn more about the situation in India by reading “Stop the Biopiracy of Climate Resilient Crops” by clicking here. The Wall Street Journal ran an article on how organic farming, even with reduced yields, is more profitable for Indian farmers than conventional crops, because the farmers no longer are subjected to high up front costs for chemical fertilizers and insecticides, and they can save seeds from year to year.

Concerns regarding the safety of wildlife in the surrounding areas of GM crops: A major study performed by the British government and published by the Royal Society, found that GM crops had 33% fewer seeds for birds to eat at the end of the season, and even two years later there were still 25% fewer seeds. As the study puts it: “While reduction or removal of the visible flora temporarily reduces the food available to farmland animals, the key to longer-term impacts is the ‘seed rain’ (seeds falling from weeds) and its contribution to the seedbank (weed seeds left in soil).” (5) They concluded that over time this would have a dramatic impact on the bird populations which are dependent on these seeds. There are also fewer bees, beetles, butterflies and other insects in the GM crops. Such invertebrates are food for mammals, birds and other animals, and many are important for controlling pests or recycling nutrients within the soil.

Concerns regarding the use of Bt crops and organic agriculture: Bt is often used in organic agriculture; it is an excellent biological control for corn and cotton insect pests. It is the most widely used biological control in organic agriculture. But Bt engineered plants will lead quickly to significant insect resistance, depriving organic farmers of one of their most useful tools.

Concerns regarding the business of corporate agriculture: Many are concerned that farmers are turning dependent on large multinational corporations (MNCs) for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs while also becoming more vulnerable to pressures to produce genetically engineered crops. They fear the predatory nature of corporate agriculture and its attempts to corner the entire chain of food production from seeds to sales of food products. Three companies — Cargill, Archer Daniels and Bunge — control nearly 90 per cent of global grain trade while DuPont and Monsanto dominate the global seed market. Eleven firms account for about half the world sales of seeds, of which about a quarter are sales of genetically engineered seeds. (6) And agrichemical sales are concentrated in 6 firms which together control 85% of the annual pesticide market. (7) The research into GMO crops is very expensive, meaning only large, well funded companies can afford the research. It’s this last concern, that of “vertical integration” (i.e., a corporation taking over the entire food production cycle from the development of proprietary strains of DNA and the sales of seeds to farmers down to contracts with farmers that determine what is produced, how and for whom, and at what price and quality), that I want to focus on.

In an equity research paper done by Deutsche Banc of DuPont in 1999, they stated that they were willing to believe that GMOs were safe and “may provide a benefit for the environment” but that the perception wars are being lost by the industry. “Not a day goes by lately where concerns and/or rebuttals are not in the press somewhere in the world. Domestic concerns regarding agbiotechnology are clearly on the rise, with the Monarch butterfly but one example of negative press causing a rethink of the future. For the most part, though, it has not yet gotten the attention of the ordinary U.S. citizen, but when it does – look out.”

The corporations which have so much at stake here know that they need a more aggressive marketing technique to promote the impression that GMOs are good and safe to use. Agrichemical lobbyists are trying to convince the public that the industry is “science-based”. A new global federation of agrichemical multinational corporations, Crop Life International, is the new representative of the “plant science industry”. Crop Life’s annual report for 2007 makes the breathtaking claim that pesticides are actually good for the environment for a host of reasons, including “lower carbon dioxide emissions associated with the switch to no-till/reduced tillage farming systems, and less frequent pesticide applications made possible by biotech crops fuel savings.”

The agrichemical companies are vertically integrated, based on the law of efficiency similar to economies of scale which favors big corporations. Antonio Tujan, Jr., international director of the Ibon Foundation Inc. (a research and educational institution specializing in socio-economic issues) says that “integration destroys the free market as it becomes increasingly dominated by the giants, which are able to dictate profits and what is produced.” This turns the market into a sellers’ market, and farmers have little or no choice. Farmers are forced to accept whatever they are asked to use such as seeds and pesticides. A democratic market, in contrast, is a consumers’ market.

The big companies have a lot at stake, and the squabbling and double dealing – not to mention lawsuits and counter suits – are worthy of a good thriller. Monsanto, after years of acquiring seed companies while trying to become the major seed producer in the world, filed a lawsuit in the spring accusing DuPont of patent infringement; DuPont countersued saying Monsanto wanted to protect its franchise at the expense of giving farmers access to better technology. But in June, DuPont sued BASF over the same kind of alleged violations Monsanto sued it for in the spring – and of course, BASF countersued!

A more disturbing set of statistics is the number of lawsuits that Monsanto has filed against farmers who are accused of violating its patents. It has built a department of 75 employees and set aside an annual budget of $10 million for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers for patent infringement. For cases with recorded judgments, farmers have paid a mean of $412,259.54. (Click here to read the entire report.) The table below gives the number of cases by year:

Number of Lawsuits by Year

Source: The Center for Food Safety, January 2005

According to Tom Wiley, a North Dakota farmer, farmers are being sued for having GMOs on their property that they “did not buy, do not want, will not use and cannot sell.”

This just in: Monsanto announced on August 13 that it would be raising prices for its genetically modifed seeds from 17% to 42% – saying that these new seeds will boost yields; this is part of the company’s drive to double profits by 2012. (8)

Email Subscription

Subscribe to our Blog

Two Sisters on a Mission.

Patty and Leigh Anne founded this company to make the whole world safer while making our personal environments more beautiful.

After forming O Ecotextiles in 2004, they began a world-wide search for manufacturing partners interested in a cradle-to-cradle process of creating no-impact, perfectly safe, incredibly luxurious fabrics.

They began working with people around the world: Romanian farmers who dew- or field-ret hemp stalks; a Japanese mill owner committed to “green” processes, even new methods such as using ozone to bleach fabric; a 100-year-old Italian mill that produces no wastewater; a Chilean mill shifting to entirely green processes; an Italian dye house that produces biodegradable, heavy-metal free textiles.